Monero - if you can't beat them, join them!

GrandMasterDash

GrandMasterDash

Well-known member
Masternode Owner/Operator
Monero (and similar) utilise Ring CT and Ring Signatures on their blockchain. It all seems very fashionable at the moment, the darknets seem to be embracing it. Any chance of that coming to dash?

I think it's okay if dash concedes to such things. Monero would take credit / rub our face in it, but who cares.. in the long term it would be viewed as yet another reason to use dash.

Btw, I know it would bloat the blockchain..
 
Not a chance of doing that I think. Our setups differ so much that I don't think it would even be possible without renouncing most of Dash features.

The market changes a lot and there is room for many of us, no need to focus so much on marketcap to make decisions. That would lead us all to Bitcoin :)
 
Grandmaster i was wondering the same thing. I've never got into Monero as i always perceived dash superior with more professional community. What concerns me though is if Dash is truly digital cash, markets should be all over it.

Perhaps all that is needed is greater confidence in Private Send. I wonder if we could create a bounty budget proposal that would pay out anyone that can provably break Private Send. I'm not sure how it would work technically. Maybe it could be funded from unused budget dash as to not take away from any other projects.
 
First of all, why the hell was this moved to Alt Currencies?? This is clearly a subject about dash! The mere mention of another alt gets it moved? Perhaps someone should go through all the other posts citing bitcoin, ethereum, doge etc and move them also.

Back on topic...

I don't know the technicalities but I suspect Ring CT etc could be done in dash if the blockchain accommodated two block types; one for conventional transactions and the other for CT. The user would decide the type of transaction and pay a little more because of the bloat (just saying).

Also, I read that one of the reasons monero is popular on the darknets is because it can remain there i.e. doesn't have to talk to external MNs. To me, this is more the reason why dash should operate two types of nodes (dark and cloudy) yet with a single blockchain. Users would choose the network / route they want (dark or cloudy) and the transaction would operate wholly in that network.

With all this in mind, it would make total sense if dash and monero merged to one blockchain. We'd get Ring CT and they'd get MNs operating on the darkweb (with all the advantages that brings). Of course, InstandSend wouldn't work on the dark side but that's ok, the dashenero users would simply choose which netowrk from the same wallet and it would hit the same blockchain. Can you imagine how monero would explode if they had dark MNs.
 
I think that it would not be smart to change the architecture just because of the hype on another coin. When there was a hype on ETH, there were voices that we should consider to be similar to ETH. I guess this would not be a good strategy.
Monero have their 5 minutes - good for them. This does not mean that we should change our technology and goals to be a 2nd Monero. PrivateSend should be much more effective after v.0.12.1 is released and ultimately will be much better with final Evolution release - it should be enough for us.
Another thing is a business perspective - we aim to be a digital cash used in daily financial operations (not necessarily a dark-market operations). Monero's hype is based on the fact that they were accepted by the dark-markets. My personal opinion is that this could be the end of their business development - darknet coin will rather never be accepted by the mainsteram. If we want to grow to the size of PayPal (and this is the goal), we need to be smart with our technology choices.
 
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Dashes technology is actually better IMO. Moneros technology offers great privacy today, but likely no privacy in 10 years. As a result, it is not really good even for dark markets. In 10 years the encryption will likely be breakable and at that point all the connections necessary to prosecute people who committed crimes 10 years earlier would be possible.

Dash's technology is a bit worse today as if enough masternodes were compromised then the transactions could be unraveled, but it has the advantage that once it is done it is done. The transactions have been unlinked and there is no fear of a hidden decryption bomb in 10 years time. Of course the best of the worlds would be to combine the two.

The primary reason why Dash is not adopted by darkmarkets is mixing speed is too slow. This will be solved in evolution where fungibility will be default (supposedly).

Similar to Kot, I think at this stage of Dash development I think dark market adoption is probably not the best. It is better to get mainstream first and then work on more privacy and get darknet adoption. Once darknet adoption happens it will be almost impossible to get mainstream adoption. It is awesome for monero that they have grown due to this, but don't expect them to keep growing as now no one but dark markets will want to touch them for fear of being put on a list.
 
kot said:
I think that it would not be smart to change the architecture just because of the hype on another coin. When there was a hype on ETH, there were voices that we should consider to be similar to ETH. I guess this would not be a good strategy.
Monero have their 5 minutes - good for them. This does not mean that we should change our technology and goals to be a 2nd Monero. PrivateSend should be much more effective after v.0.12.1 is released and ultimately will be much better with final Evolution release - it should be enough for us.
Another thing is a business perspective - we aim to be a digital cash used in daily financial operations (not necessarily a dark-market operations). Monero's hype is based on the fact that they were accepted by the dark-markets. My personal opinion is that this could be the end of their business development - darknet coin will rather never be accepted by the mainsteram. If we want to grow to the size of PayPal (and this is the goal), we need to be smart with our technology choices.
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You're assuming the majority of MNOs agree with the "business perspective" and not better access to dark markets. This strategic question was never put to us, only individual proposals where the current guidance from Evan is for fiat gateways. While not a clear winner, the proposal for "ANON-BY-MASTERNODES" did actually get more yes votes than no. Surely we can work on the business perspective and dark markets at the same time.

AFAIK, the underlying reason for choosing monero over dash is that the masternodes only operate on public IPs. I guess if that obstacle was overcome, there would be a little more support... but even so, monero effectively does it's mixing at the time of the transaction as part of it's protocol. All I'm saying is, why must we now accept that dash's solution is the best solution when dark markets are telling us something else? To me, that sounds like corporate denial; failing to acknowledge there might be merit to monero's technology. Yes, masternodes on dark markets would almost certainly lose InstantSend but at least we could truly claim to be "digital cash" and not merely a bankers-friendly version.

I agree there is definitely a 15-minutes-of-fame element to monero.... but that's not because of a lack in technical brilliance.... it's because their funding model is totally useless compared to dash. But if they were to ever adopt their own version of masternodes and funding model, their potential would sky rocket over night.
 
xdashguy said:
Dashes technology is actually better IMO. Moneros technology offers great privacy today, but likely no privacy in 10 years. As a result, it is not really good even for dark markets. In 10 years the encryption will likely be breakable and at that point all the connections necessary to prosecute people who committed crimes 10 years earlier would be possible.

Dash's technology is a bit worse today as if enough masternodes were compromised then the transactions could be unraveled, but it has the advantage that once it is done it is done. The transactions have been unlinked and there is no fear of a hidden decryption bomb in 10 years time. Of course the best of the worlds would be to combine the two.

The primary reason why Dash is not adopted by darkmarkets is mixing speed is too slow. This will be solved in evolution where fungibility will be default (supposedly).

Similar to Kot, I think at this stage of Dash development I think dark market adoption is probably not the best. It is better to get mainstream first and then work on more privacy and get darknet adoption. Once darknet adoption happens it will be almost impossible to get mainstream adoption. It is awesome for monero that they have grown due to this, but don't expect them to keep growing as now no one but dark markets will want to touch them for fear of being put on a list.
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I'm not technical enough to say with certainty how robust monero's math is, but from what I've seen, any algorithm capable of breaking monero would also be capable of breaking dash's mixing and other mischievous things. Besides, I don't think it would take much to enlarge monero's pool of mixing at the time of the transaction.
 
GrandMasterDash said:
I'm not technical enough to say with certainty how robust monero's math is, but from what I've seen, any algorithm capable of breaking monero would also be capable of breaking dash's mixing and other mischievous things. Besides, I don't think it would take much to enlarge monero's pool of mixing at the time of the transaction.
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Cryptonote from an architectural standpoint is an attempt to take the Bitcoin architecture and make it as private as possible at all costs. In that process it has sacrificed most of the key features that make Bitcoin viable - such as some element of security / trustless operation when not using a fullnode (i.e. mobile), scalability, usability and an open ledger where everyone from merchants to consumers can see where funds are moving to on the chain without needing a full local chain to scan every tx just to find a balance.

Dash's main goal is to improve the existing level of scalability, usability and decentralization in Bitcoin, not make these things worse. If we tried to implement the Cryptonote architectural paradigm, we would be going backwards from Bitcoin, no security for mobile wallets, no SPV, no electrum, no multisig, no Evolution, not lightening network, no decentralized governance, no instant transactions - just private transactions between desktop fullnodes with a blockchain growing many times faster and extremely slow processing of anything to do with transactions / wallets to the point where any kind of decentralized or secure ecosystem becomes impossible (see MyMonero.com).

In pretty much every area outside of sending private transactions between desktop fullnodes, Cryptonote is unviable in my view, and I doubt any Cryptonote chain would survive any large transaction volume without the network grinding to a halt. Trying to steer Dash towards Cryptonote would be like taking a ferrari and bolting 5 tons of steal on the outside and saying 'look how safe it is, everyone is going to drive these'. It means our transactions are not "as private" as cryptonote ones, but the level of privacy in Dash is still far better than Bitcoin anonymization technologies that have been sufficient for the markets that need them to date - Dash has the best privacy users are going to get on a Bitcoin based technology that they can still use safely outside of a desktop computer and has proven cryptography, scalability and all the other features that we need as a base to provide a usable currency for mainstream users. That should be good enough for us, and is just one of many features, our main one is making crypto usable - Cryptonote is as far away from that as is possible :)
 
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AndyDark said:
Cryptonote from an architectural standpoint is an attempt to take the Bitcoin architecture and make it as private as possible at all costs. In that process it has sacrificed most of the key features that make Bitcoin viable - such as some element of security / trustless operation when not using a fullnode (i.e. mobile), scalability, usability and an open ledger where everyone from merchants to consumers can see where funds are moving to on the chain without needing a full local chain to scan every tx just to find a balance.

Dash's main goal is to improve the existing level of scalability, usability and decentralization in Bitcoin, not make these things worse. If we tried to implement the Cryptonote architectural paradigm, we would be going backwards from Bitcoin, no security for mobile wallets, no SPV, no electrum, no multisig, no Evolution, not lightening network, no decentralized governance, no instant transactions - just private transactions between desktop fullnodes with a blockchain growing many times faster and extremely slow processing of anything to do with transactions / wallets to the point where any kind of decentralized or secure ecosystem becomes impossible (see MyMonero.com).

In pretty much every area outside of sending private transactions between desktop fullnodes, Cryptonote is unviable in my view, and I doubt any Cryptonote chain would survive any large transaction volume without the network grinding to a halt. Trying to steer Dash towards Cryptonote would be like taking a ferrari and bolting 5 tons of steal on the outside and saying 'look how safe it is, everyone is going to drive these'. It means our transactions are not "as private" as cryptonote ones, but the level of privacy in Dash is still far better than Bitcoin anonymization technologies that have been sufficient for the markets that need them to date - Dash has the best privacy users are going to get on a Bitcoin based technology that they can still use safely outside of a desktop computer and has proven cryptography, scalability and all the other features that we need as a base to provide a usable currency for mainstream users. That should be good enough for us, and is just one of many features, our main one is making crypto usable - Cryptonote is as far away from that as is possible :)
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That's a good answer and fair enough. Of course, I do favour dash and your arguments would make a great article in The Dash Times.. their recent article ("Why Monero’s Growth Has a Ceiling") wasn't very convincing, tbh, it just looked a bit like sour grapes.
 
GrandMasterDash said:
That's a good answer and fair enough. Of course, I do favour dash and your arguments would make a great article in The Dash Times.. their recent article ("Why Monero’s Growth Has a Ceiling") wasn't very convincing, tbh, it just looked a bit like sour grapes.
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It's not something i would really want to put any time into commenting on in terms of my opinions on other projects that have different goals/target markets to Dash, except when people want to know what the differences are or how different technologies could benefit Dash like I mentioned above. I think all our dev time should be on developing Dash and working with other devs and focus on improving our own technology. At the same time we need to convey the reasoning / value / benefits of Dash's architecture as I don't think we do that enough. That's mainly because of Evolution I guess, and all the effort is going into design and coding, the communication will ramp up when we have the system to take out into the mainstream and grow it there based on giving users new value, unless another coin is competing with that and in our scope, i don't think it matters much what they're doing.
 
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Sub-Ether refuses to make sarcastic comments about bloated unscalable blockchains, developmental deadends,missing proof of service/stake, troll armies, poor single tier network ability and obvious artifical price rises based on creeping buy walls using lack of supply as a market mover.
No no no, he would never say anything like that, so obviously doesn't mean any of it :D
 
noobtrader said:
i rather see DASH to implement decentralized exchange instead of copying monero...
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Have you tried bitsquare? You can trade fiat for dash via bitcoin. I've been trying to encourage Manfred to make a proposal to add dash as a native currency. He has project management issues, I get the feeling he's trying to do too much himself. I'd be happy if someone could talk him around.
 
I agree cryptonote is not technically the answer, but let me ask you this:

1. Is our current anonymity solution the one that we plan to stick to long term?
2. Have there been any discussions/plans, on implementing something at the protocol level?

I remember Evan saying he thought he could introduce anonymity in a different way, I'm gonna say this was last year, but I can't find the article. Then apparently we moved on from there. I think it is pretty well known I am not a fan of our anonymity implementation and I don't want to rehash that discussion, so my question really boils down to this: is this it?

Pablo.
 
fible1 said:
I agree cryptonote is not technically the answer, but let me ask you this:

1. Is our current anonymity solution the one that we plan to stick to long term?

2. Have there been any discussions/plans, on implementing something at the protocol level?

I remember Evan saying he thought he could introduce anonymity in a different way, I'm gonna say this was last year, but I can't find the article. Then apparently we moved on from there. I think it is pretty well known I am not a fan of our anonymity implementation and I don't want to rehash that discussion, so my question really boils down to this: is this it?

Pablo.
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Hey Pablo,

1. Is our current anonymity solution the one that we plan to stick to long term?

I don't know if it will be tx joining based long term or not. I would be happy if unlinking funds was tx joining but automated in Evolution (click transfer from one account to your cash account, close your app/browser, 30 minutes later it's there). Not sure what Evan is going to decide to implement yet though.

2. Have there been any discussions/plans, on implementing something at the protocol level?

Yes. Lots. There's lots of different opinions on whether to do this. I am the wrong person to ask though. If someone can show me protocol level privacy on an open ledger i am all for it.

I remember Evan saying he thought he could introduce anonymity in a different way, I'm gonna say this was last year, but I can't find the article. Then apparently we moved on from there. I think it is pretty well known I am not a fan of our anonymity implementation and I don't want to rehash that discussion, so my question really boils down to this: is this it?

In terms of if it will the privacy implementation be in the current state forever, no. because it's pretty bad usability and whatever the solution, usability is key for all our features.

Remember too, all privacy systems based on plausible deniability are only as strong as the entropy behind them, which basically means the number of users generating TX, and your tx can be linked ultimately if the users you're mixing with/via collude. That's another reason usability and scalability is important for privacy. You need that first to have enough entropy for whatever privacy solution to be strong.

Andy
 
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I would back a proposal for a dash research lab to look at future privacy solutions.

Even if we stick to the current solution, it would be a good exercise in exploring other options and explain why they arent better than current solution.
 
turning the DASH blockchain into Cryponote would mean to hard-hard-fork the blockchain. It is unfeasible.

maybe a straight forward solution would be to use Zerocash which should be quite easy to implement
and it would not destroy or replace the blockchain
 
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